ad been prepared during his
incarceration by the new and youthful District Attorney, "Judge" Henry
Harvey, and as it offered a fitting sacrifice for the dedication of
the new temple of justice, the people were satisfied and grateful.

The court-room was as bare of ornament as the cell from which the
prisoner had just been taken. There was an imitation walnut clock at
the back of the Judge's hair-cloth sofa, his revolving chair, and his
high desk. This was the only ornament. Below was the green table of
the District Attorney, upon which rested his papers and law-books and
his high hat. To one side sat the jury, ranch-owners and prominent
citizens, proud of having to serve on this the first day; and on the
other the prisoner in his box. Around them gathered the citizens of
Zepata in close rows, crowded together on unpainted benches; back of
them more citizens standing and a few awed Mexicans; and around all
the whitewashed walls. Colonel John Stogart, of Dallas, the prisoner's
attorney, procured obviously at great expense, no one knew by whom,
and Barrow's wife, a thin yellow-faced woman in a mean-fitting showy
gown, sat among the local celebrities at the District Attorney's
elbow. She was the only woman in the room.

Colonel Stogart's speech had been good. The citizens were glad it had
been so good; it had kept up the general tone of excellence, and it
was well that the best lawyer of Dallas should be present on this
occasion, and that he should have made what the citizens of Zepata
were proud to believe was one of the efforts of his life. As they
said, a court-house such as this one was not open for business every
day. It was also proper that Judge Truax, who was a real Judge, and
not one by courtesy only, as was the young District Attorney, should
sit upon the bench. He also was associated with the early days and
with the marvellous growth of Zepata City. He had taught the young
District Attorney much of what he knew, and his long white hair and
silver-rimmed spectacles gave dignity and the appearance of calm
justice to the bare room and to the heated words of the rival orators.

Colonel Stogart ceased speaking, and the District Attorney sucked in
his upper lip with a nervous, impatient sigh as he recognized that the
visiting attorney had proved murder in the second degree, and that an
execution in the jail-yard would not follow as a fitting sequence.

But he was determined that so far as in him lay he would at leas